


Not Unpleasant Surprises

by taylor_tut



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Needs Repairs, Connor (Detroit: Become Human) Whump, Gen, Sick Character, Sickfic, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-17
Updated: 2018-11-17
Packaged: 2019-08-24 20:42:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16647431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taylor_tut/pseuds/taylor_tut
Summary: A birthday fic for a friend on tumblr. The request was for Connor whump, and I chose to make him sample some tainted blue blood and retreat and isolate when the pain hit. He calls Hank; Hank calls Gavin; Gavin tries his best.





	Not Unpleasant Surprises

Connor had already tried calling Hank three times in the past half hour, but he didn’t know what else to do, so he tried again. His LED was blinking furiously red, illuminating the dark closet he’d hidden away in. It was only a matter of time until Gavin found him and dragged him back onto the crime scene without letting him explain what was happening, and he desperately needed to get ahold of someone who would listen. 

“Hello?” Hank asked, sounding like he’d just woken up, and the relief that washed over him was so strong that it turned his LED blue again, if only for half a second. 

“Hank,” he breathed, trying to keep his voice both quiet and steady enough that Hank could understand, “I need—I’m not—”

“Woah, Connor? Take it easy,” he instructed. Connor could already hear him putting his coat on. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

He took a breath. “I sampled some blue blood,” he explained, “but it wasn’t—it was bad.”

The wind hitting Hank’s phone nearly drowned out his voice. “Bad how?” he asked. “Like, you were poisoned?”

Honestly, Connor had fuck-all idea. “I dunno,” he admitted, slurring in a way that was so distinctly un-Connor-like that it had Hank cursing the stalling of his old truck engine. 

“Where are you?” he demanded, already pulling up the location of the crime scene that Connor and Gavin had been sent on with his GPS. 

“I… I dunno,” Connor repeated. Fuck, that wasn’t good. The kid never “didn’t know.” Connor knew EVERYTHING.

“Okay, kid; I’m on my way to get you, alright?” Hank reassured. “It’s gonna be fine. But I’ve gotta hang up. Can you get help in the meantime?”

Connor looked around, but only his eyes would move—the rest of his body felt frozen in place. 

“I can’t get up,” he admitted, and Hank tried to not let on how much that freaked him out. 

“That’s fine. I’ll handle it. And I’ll be there as soon as I can.” Without waiting for Connor to reply, Hank hung up the phone and typed in the next number he needed to call. 

“Hello?”

“Gavin, what the fuck is wrong with you?” Hank demanded harshly, hoping that it wasn’t so harsh that he’d hang up. Gavin audibly fumbled.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he questioned angrily. “I didn’t do anything!” 

“Fowler gives Connor to you for one fuckin’ mission and you can’t even keep track of him?” 

For seemingly the first time, Gavin realized that it HAD been quite a while since he’d seen the plastic prick, and that usually meant trouble. 

“Ugh, where is he?” he asked irritably. 

“I don’t know,” Hank snapped. “He just called me from some closet and said he was malfunctioning. I’m on my way, but if he’s dead when I get there, then so are you.” With that, he hung up the phone, and Gavin cursed. He didn’t have time for this. Dragging himself away from the crime scene reluctantly, he began to poke around the rooms of the abandoned hospital looking for a closet or something similar. Finally, he found a janitor’s closet whose door was ajar, and he knocked on it—he’d learned to knock before entering when he was working on a case that had more than a handful of officers after walking in on a makeout session during a case that had borrowed detectives from the next precinct over. 

“Occupied,” Connor’s voice, wavering and weak, replied. It was surprising, at least, to Gavin, and he gripped the doorknob anyway.

“Tough,” he said before throwing the door open. Connor was sitting on the ground, propped up against some shelves in the closet, and cringed away from the light of the hallway. His LED was bright red. “What happened to you?” Gavin asked, not properly hiding his hostility. Connor was shivering; Gavin could hear the whirring of gears that were making that happen, but the closet was warm enough that he could definitely tell that Connor was putting off some heat. 

“A sample I ran,” Connor tried to explain, “I don’t know. Started feeling—bad—after.” It didn’t help that Connor himself didn’t totally understand what was happening to him. His self-diagnostic report kept coming back showing a nonspecific error message, no matter how many times he ran it, and his connection kept fading in and out, making it impossible to remain signed in for long enough to send a report to Cyberlife. 

“That’s specific,” Gavin muttered irritably. “‘Bad’ how?” 

Connor shifted, feeling uncomfortable and hot and cold at the same time. Shivering was causing restless energy to build up in his back and limbs, but for the life of him, he couldn’t find the strength to move them. Even with the door closed, the light from the hallway was too bright for his eyes, making it difficult to see anything but a vague, unhappy blob that he assumed was Gavin’s. 

“Pressure,” he replied vaguely, “in my head. And my stomach.” Gavin nodded. That, he thought, he could deal with. Sounded almost like a hangover, but unless Hank was teaching Connor some new, shittier human lessons that no one else knew about, he figured that wasn’t a possibility. Maybe something was wrong with the thirium he’d sampled, or maybe he was malfunctioning. All he knew for sure was that Connor was running hot, and that if he was still lying on his back in a broom closet when Hank arrived, Gavin might get his ass kicked. Well, lucky for him, abandoned or not this was a hospital, and that meant that there were patient rooms all over the place. 

“Let’s get you into a bed,” Gavin decided aloud. “If I’m stuck babysitting until Hank gets here, I’m not gonna do it in a fucking closet.”

Connor’s eyes lit up a bit. “Hank’s coming?” he asked, sounding, of all things, surprised. 

“Of course he is,” Gavin returned, not sweetly. “You called him. He’s probably got a maintenance person on the way, too.”

Almost like that information was surprising to him, Connor nodded in relief. He was barely any help as Gavin struggled to lift him, but based on the increase of gear-whirring sounds and heat production, he decided to just bite the bullet on that one. 

“This is gonna fuck my back up,” he lamented, draping Connor’s half-limp arm over his shoulders and waiting the several moments it took him to at least get his feet under him, even if they barely supported any weight. In the light of the hall, Connor winced, slamming his eyes shut, and Gavin transferred him as fast as he could from the closet to the nearest patient room, where he sat him on the edge of the bed and closed the door, then beelined to the curtains to shut out the sun. By the time he was back at Connor’s side, he’d drooped forward enough that Gavin had to press on his shoulders to keep him from falling on his face. 

“Anderson’s going to be here soon,” he found himself reassuring despite the desire to do anything but comfort the android. He couldn’t help it—he looked so miserable, and misery made him appear almost human. Even as much of an asshole as he was, Gavin would never be a dick to a human officer who’d been hurt on the job, but he did hate that he now struggled to lash out at Connor. “Lie down, stupid,” he instructed, pushing him aggressively back against the bed to make up for the overall gentleness of the interaction. Connor had no choice but to obey, doing his best to ensure that he landed in a way where his arm was covering his eyes.

“Detective Reed,” Connor asked in a small voice, “am I going to shut down?”

Gavin blinked in surprise. “What?” he asked, dumbfounded by even the assertion. “No; of course not.”

“I’ve never had this happen before,” Connor objected. “It’s… unpleasant.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “Yeah,” he agreed condescendingly, “headaches always are. My mom used to get migraines all the time,” he said, unsure why he’d offered a human comparison that would likely provide no comfort to Connor since it wasn’t even relevant. “I’m sure you’ll be all reset and ready to go as soon as maintenance looks you over.” 

Despite what Gavin expected, Connor relaxed a bit at that, releasing some of the slack in his body that had apparently been from anxiety. 

“Just shut your mouth until Anderson gets here,” he demanded, and Connor obeyed, grateful for not being expected to keep up conversation anymore or worse, keep working like he’d expected to have to if he’d confessed to Gavin. Connor wasn’t used to being surprised, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about it yet as a whole, but at least this time, it hadn’t been unpleasant. 


End file.
